Arrow announces some fabulous Blu-ray/DVD titles for January & February

25 November 2014

Today Arrow Films announced, via their Twitter feed, their release slate of Blu-ray and dual format titles for January and February 2015. The Arrow faithful would have been are that a couple of these were in the pipeline, but there were still a couple of lovely surprises.

The titles in question are outlined below. More details for each will be confirmed nearer to the release date.

Tenebrae | Blu-ray |
19th January 2015

A notorious horror classic returns in all its depraved glory. This infamous video nasty updated the classic Giallo blueprint for the gorified 80s, courting controversy and drenching the viewer in crimson arterial spray.

A razor-wielding psycho is stalking the horror writer Peter Neal, in Rome to promote his latest work, Tenebre. But the author isn’t the obsessive killer’s only target, the beautiful women who surround him are doomed as one by one, they fall victim to the murderer’s slashing blade…

Will fiction and reality blur as fear and madness take hold? Watch in terror as by turns the cast fall victim to the sadistic imagination of Dario Argento, Italy’s master of horror.

Special Edition contents:

Newly remastered High Definition digital transfer of the film

Presented in High Definition Blu-ray (1080p) and Standard Definition DVD

Exclusive collector’s booklet featuring writing on the film by Alan Jones, author of Profondo Argento, an interview with cinematographer Luciano Tovoli and an appreciation of the film by director Peter Strickland, illustrated with original posters and lobby cards

Thief [Limited Slipcase Edition] | Blu-ray | 26th January 2015

For his first theatrical feature, Michael Mann (Manhunter, Public Enemies) returned to the rain-soaked streets of his hometown, Chicago, for a stunning piece of neo-noir starring James Caan (The Godfather, Rollerball) at his toughest.

Caan plays Frank, a jewel thief and former convict who is looking to settle down with his girlfriend (Tuesday Weld – Once Upon a Time in America) and begin a family. But when his ‘fence’ is thrown from a window and the Chicago mafia begin to flex their muscles, his hopes of a quiet life become anything but…

With a sterling supporting cast in the shape of James Belushi, Robert Prosky, Willie Nelson and Dennis Farina, lush electronic score by Tangerine Dream and the assured direction of Mann, Thief is a standout eighties crime flick that paved the way for the his later urban thrillers such as Heat and Collateral as well as Nicolas Winding Refn’s Drive.

Special Edition contents:

Limited Slipcase Edition [3000 units] featuring two versions of the film

High Definition Blu-ray (1080p) presentation of the director’s cut from a new 4K film transfer, approved by director Michael Mann, with uncompressed 5.1 DTS-HD Master Audio

High Definition Blu-ray (1080p) presentation of the original theatrical cut [Limited Edition Exclusive] with original uncompressed 2.0 Stereo PCM audio

Optional English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing

Optional isolated music and effects track on the theatrical cut

Audio commentary by writer-director Michael Mann and actor James Caan

The Directors: Michael Mann – a 2001 documentary on the filmmaker, containing interviews with Mann, James Belushi, William Petersen, Jon Voight and others

Stolen Dreams – a new interview with Caan, filmed exclusively for this release

Hollywood USA: James Caan – an episode of the French TV series Ciné regards devoted to the actor, filmed shortly after Thief had finished production

The Art of the Heist – an examination of Thief with writer and critic F.X. Feeney, author of the Taschen volume on Michael Mann

Illustrated collector’s booklet featuring new writing on the film by Brad Stevens

Withnail & I / How to Get Ahead in Advertising [Special Edition] | Blu-ray | 9th February 2015

If you missed out on the Limited Edition (and many did), then fear not, as the finest cult film available to humanity is to be given a wider Blu-ray release in February 2015.

Camden Town, the arse-end of the sixties. Two struggling, unemployed actors decide some respite is in order and so depart their miserable flat for a week in the Lake District – one that will involve rain, booze, minimal supplies, a randy bull and an even randier Uncle Monty.

Based on the real-life experiences of former actor turned writer/director Bruce Robinson, Withnail & I has become one of British cinema’s most fondly remembered comedies. A cult film in the truest sense that has also become a classic.

Perfectly cast – with career-defining roles for Richard E. Grant, Paul McGann, Richard Griffiths and Ralph Brown – and crammed with irresistibly quotable dialogue, Withnail & I is a sheer delight, even on the umpteenth viewing.

Special Edition contents:

New 2K restoration of Withnail & I from the original camera negative, supervised and approved by director of photography Peter Hannan

Bruce Robinson’s follow-up feature, newly transferred from original film elements and approved by director of photography Peter Hannan

High Definition Blu-ray (1080p) Presentation of both films

Original uncompressed mono 1.0 PCM audio for both films

Optional English subtitles for the deaf and hard-of-hearing

Audio commentary by writer-director Bruce Robinson

Audio commentary by critic and writer Kevin Jackson, author of the BFI Modern Classic on Withnail & I

ll four original Withnail Weekend documentaries, first screened on Channel 4 in 1999, including: The Peculiar Memories of Bruce Robinson, which looks at the director’s career; Withnail & Us, which focuses on the film’s making; and two shorter documentaries, I Demand to Have Some Booze and Withnail on the Pier

Newly filmed interview with production designer Michael Pickwoad, who discusses his work on Withnail & I

An appreciation of Withnail & I by Sam Bain, co-creator of Peep Show and Fresh Meat

First come the Shivers… then, you turn Rabid! Celebrated Canadian cult auteur David Cronenberg (The Fly, Videodrome) followed up Shivers with this tense and gory thriller which expands upon the venereal disease theme of that film, this time unleashing it on the whole of downtown Montreal – with terrifying consequences.

When beautiful Rose (adult film star Marilyn Chambers) is badly injured in a motorcycle crash, Dr. Keloid, who is in the process of developing a revolutionary new type of skin-graft, seizes the opportunity to test out his as yet unproven methods. The surgery appears successful and Rose seems restored to full health. But all is not as it should be – Rose has been transformed into a contagious blood-sucker, endowed with a bizarre, needle-like protrusion in her armpit with which she drains the blood from those unfortunate enough to be in her vicinity.

An important landmark in the early career of Cronenberg, Rabid sees the director returning to the viral theme of his earlier work but on a much larger (and more assured) scale – where the infection has shifted from the confines of a single apartment block to the expansive shopping centres and motorways of Canada’s second largest city.

Special Edition contents:

New High Definition Digital Transfer

High Definition Blu-ray (1080p) and Standard Definition DVD presentation of the feature

Original mono audio (uncompressed PCM on the Blu-ray)

Optional English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing

Audio Commentary with writer-director David Cronenberg

Audio Commentary with William Beard, author of The Artist as Monster: The Cinema of David Cronenberg

Archive interview with David Cronenberg

Brand new interview with executive producer Ivan Reitman

Brand new interview with co-producer Don Carmody

Make-up Memories: Joe Blasco Remembers Rabid – A short featurette in which Blasco recalls how the film’s various gruesome effects were achieved

Raw, Rough and Rabid: The Lacerating Legacy of Cinépix – Featurette looking back at the early years of the celebrated Canadian production company, including interviews with author Kier-La Janisse and special makeup artist Joe Blasco

Collector’s Booklet featuring new writing on the film by Kier-La Janisse, reprinted excerpts of Cronenberg on Cronenberg and more, illustrated with original archive stills and posters.

You can read our review of the film in its previous DVD incarnation here.

The Killing + Killer’s Kiss | Blu-ray | 9th February 2015

An ex-con, a corrupt cop, a reformed alcoholic, a wrestler, a sharpshooter and a pair of inside men: these seven men intent on executing the perfect robbery and taking a racetrack for two million dollars. But this is the world of film noir, a tough, sour place where nothing quite goes as planned…

For his third feature Stanley Kubrick adapted Lionel White’s Clean Break with a little help from hard-boiled specialist Jim Thompson (The Killer Inside Me), and in doing so created a heist movie classic, one to rank alongside John Huston’s The Asphalt Jungle and Quentin Tarantino’s Reservoir Dogs. The robbery itself is one of cinema’s great set-pieces, as taut a piece of filmmaking as you’ll ever find, expertly controlled by Kubrick, who called The Killing his “first mature work”.

Starring Sterling Hayden (Johnny Guitar, The Godfather), perennial fall guy Elisha Cook Jr (The Maltese Falcon, The Big Sleep) and Marie Windsor (The Narrow Margin) as his duplicitous wife, The Killing is quintessential film noir, still as brutal, thrilling and audacious as it was almost six decades ago.

From Jacques Tourneur, director of numerous horror classics including Cat People, I Walked with a Zombie and Night of the Demon, comes The Comedy of Terrors – a gleefully macabre tale which brings together genre greats Vincent Price, Peter Lorre and Boris Karloff.

Price plays Waldo Trumbull, a perpetually inebriated, down-on-his-luck undertaker who has struck on an interesting way to boost business – by hastening the deaths of those whom he buries. When landlord Mr. Black (Basil Rathbone) threatens to put him out on the street for falling behind with the rent, Trumbull, together with his reluctant and bumbling assistant Felix Gillie (Lorre), hatches an ill-advised plan to “kill two birds with one stone”, so to speak…

The penultimate directorial effort from Tourneur, The Comedy of Terrors bears many of the hallmarks of the master filmmaker’s earlier works, whilst adding a healthy dash of humour to the proceedings. Careful – you might just die laughing!

Special Edition contents:

High Definition Blu-ray (1080p) and Standard Definition DVD presentation of the feature, transferred from original film elements by MGM

Original Mono 2.0 audio (uncompressed PCM on the Blu-ray)

Optional English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing

Audio Commentary with Price historian David Del Valle

Extensive archive interview with Vincent Price

Whispering in Distant Chambers: The Nightfall of Jacques Tourneur – a specially-commissioned video essay by David Cairns, which charts the career of director Tourneur

Richard Matheson Storyteller – an archive featurette on the Comedy of Terrors writer

Collector’s booklet featuring new writing on the film by Chris Fujiwara, author of Jacques Tourneur: The Cinema of Nightfall, illustrated with original archive stills and posters.

Cover art to follow soon

The Manchurian Candidate | Blu-ray | 16th February 2015

After saving the lives of his platoon during the Korean War, Sergeant Raymond Shaw (Laurence Harvey) is hailed as a bona fide American hero. This couldn’t have come at a better time for his mother (Angela Lansbury) who is hell-bent on boosting the career of his stepfather, a senator straight from the McCarthyite wing of the US political spectrum with designs on the Presidency.

So far so familiar – but why does Shaw’s former captain (Frank Sinatra) have recurring nightmares that suggest that his distinguished comrade-in-arms might not be all that he seems?

Based on the memorably paranoid bestseller by Richard Condon (Prizzi’s Honor), this is one of the greatest of all Cold War suspense thrillers, not least for its alarmingly original take on the notion of “the enemy within”. Angela Lansbury won multiple awards and an Oscar nomination for her performance as one of the most monstrous mothers in screen history, but perhaps the most unnerving thing about the film is the way that its political satire remains so perfectly on target more than half a century later.

Special Edition contents:

High Definition Blu-ray (1080p) presentation of the main feature, transferred from original elements by MGM

Uncompressed 1.0 PCM soundtrack

Optional English SDH subtitles

Audio commentary by director John Frankenheimer

The Directors: John Frankenheimer – an hour-long portrait from 2000, including interviews with Frankenheimer, Kirk Douglas, Samuel L. Jackson, Roy Scheider, Rod Steiger and many others

Interview with John Frankenheimer, Frank Sinatra and screenwriter George Axelrod from the film’s 1988 revival

Queen of Diamonds – an interview with Angela Lansbury

A Little Solitaire – an appreciation of the film by director William Friedkin (The Exorcist)

Stills gallery

Theatrical trailer

More to be announced!

The Haunted Palace | Blu-ray | 23rd February 2015

Although recognised as part of Roger Corman’s Edgar Allan Poe cycle (its title comes from a Poe poem), The Haunted Palace has a much more significant place in film history for being the first high-profile adaptation of the work of H.P. Lovecraft, in this case his novella The Case of Charles Dexter Ward.

Ward is one of two characters played by Vincent Price, the other being Ward’s great-great-grandfather Joseph Curwen, burned as a warlock 110 years before. When Ward returns to the village of Arkham to reclaim the family mansion, his striking resemblance to his ancestor is just the first of many macabre events that proceed to unfold, including the screen debut of Lovecraft’s legendary Necronomicon.

As before, Corman and his team worked wonders with their modest budget, with Daniel Haller’s sets amongst the most elaborate in all the Poe cycle, enhanced by genuinely creepy moments such as the crowd of deformed villagers still living under Curwen’s curse.

Special Edition contents:

High Definition Blu-ray (1080p) presentation of the feature, transferred from original film elements
by MGM

Collector’s booklet containing new writing on the film by Roger Luckhurst, illustrated with original archive stills

The Tomb of Ligeia | Blu-ray | 23rd February 2015

For the last of his cycle of Edgar Allan Poe adaptations, Roger Corman asked screenwriter Robert Towne (Chinatown) to turn Poe’s story ‘Ligeia’ into another vehicle for Vincent Price, who once again plays a man so haunted by his past that he is unable to function in the present.

In this case the past comes in the form of his now-deceased first wife Ligeia, who casts a long shadow over an ill-advised second marriage to a woman who resembles her (Elizabeth Shepherd), particularly when he becomes convinced that Ligeia’s spirit is returning to him in the form of a black cat. But is this actually a delusion on his part?

Although the doom-laden narrative and Price’s tormented performance had become well established ingredients in the Corman Poe cycle, the film looks strikingly different from the earlier films, with much of it taking place in broad daylight, and shot in actual English locations (notably Stonehenge and Norfolk’s Castle Acre Priory) instead of Hollywood sets.

Special Edition contents:

High Definition Blu-ray (1080p) presentation of the feature, transferred from original
film elements by MGM